Definition of "semimonastic"

The colleges were male bastions, and academic study was meant to be a semi-monastic vocation. Thus one was not permitted to bring women into college, except on a few special occasions per year, and then only for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

2010, Thomas J. Schaeper, Kathleen Schaeper, “Yanks and Brits”, in Rhodes Scholars, Oxford, and the Creation of an American Elite, New York, NY: Berghahn Books, page 52